Page:Arthur Stringer-The Loom of Destiny.djvu/216

The Loom of Destiny How funny it all seemed, thought Bliss; how funny and familiar and old.

He said to himself that he felt as if he had sat there for years and years and years, and watched the same trees, and listened to the same birds, and heard the same hurdygurdy. No; it had not been years, but thousands and thousands of years. It sounded so old, and familiar, and reminiscent.

And the sunlight on the bed—he wondered where it could have been that he used to sit and watch the dust going up and down just the same as it was doing here. He sniffed the air lazily. It smelt very nice, with the perfume of the trees and some sort of blossoms that he could not see.

The breeze that blew in at the window in little gusts swayed the white curtain and made the warm patch of sunlight on the bed shrink up, and then grow bigger again. The hurdygurdy went away, and the birds seemed to stop for a while, and only a street cry or two came up from the Square. Bliss believed that he liked the quiet the best. It seemed as if the World had turned over, and 204